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Comment by ajsnigrutin | Hacker News Reader

> About homosexuality for example, my naive vision is that it was "not OK" until very recently

Well... it was not "OK" until recently for some time. But was "OK" for some time before that. Atleast in some places... well.. atleast ancient greeks and romans didn't seem to care about that.

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Egalitarian homosexuality is a very modern notion, which was first explicitly formulated around the late 19th century. What the Greeks and Romans practiced was dominance-based same-sex behavior which very often shaded into outright sexual coercion of the "receiving" partner. (To be fair, this describes much of their 'heterosexual' behavior as well!) Many philosophically-minded people in the classical world were quite harshly critical of these arrangements, and this attitude in turn was picked up by "universalizing", loosely-egalitarian religions such as Pauline Christianity.

It's interesting, the relationship Romans especially had to homosexuality. There was much more differentiation on which 'end' of the sexual act you were (giving/receiving) than most people attacking homosexuality today put emphasis on

(https://old.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/ce7a63/would...)

This changes throughout history, with modern homophobia being also a very modern phenomenon.

https://old.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/dw27v9/what_...

After a little more than a 1000 years we've almost reverted to the sexual freedom of the Roman Empire. Sex work and decorating your living room with well endowed gods of fertility is still frowned upon in most of the world.

In fact, in some countries gore is more acceptable than female breasts.

The sexual freedom of the Romans of the Roman Empire did not exist in the Romans that BUILT that Roman empire. They were, although the same blood, different peoples. Just as the founders of our nations and we today are different peoples. The same pretty much with every Empire that has come and gone including the Greeks.

> The sexual freedom of the Romans of the Roman Empire did not exist in the Romans that BUILT that Roman empire. They were, although the same blood, different peoples.

Not exactly the same blood; the Empire included a lot of territory outside Italy. Imperial Rome itself received a lot of population from foreign territories (it was an important place!), especially the East where most of the population was.

The rural Italians near Rome were more or less the same during the Empire as they were during the building process.

> In fact, in some countries gore is more acceptable than female breasts.

That's not because one is more acceptable than the other, but because sex is seen as a private thing and war as a public thing.

So you can show gore in your living room (public matters), but not breasts (save those for your private rooms).

Provided you consider breasts to be a strictly sexual thing.

Provided you consider that quarrels & wars could not be a strictly private matter.

Provided you consider that sex could not be a very public thing.

Comes down to choices, and culture.

>atleast ancient greeks and romans didn't seem to care about that.

Eh you should do your own research- but I seem to remember reading about how being a top for gay sex was fine, but being a bottom was very much not. So I certainly wouldn't say everyone didn't care about it. It was just accepted in a completely different (and non-reciprocal) way.

If I had to extrapolate from that logic.. to put it bluntly "a hole is a hole" so no big deal for the top, but being on the receiving end probably had the same type of feminine stereotypes we can imagine people still have issues with.

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